#155: On trust & vulnerability
Hi there.
I’ll keep this newsletter short. I read these words by Atoosa Rubenstein today and it nearly broke me:
"Vulnerability in relationships kind of feels like dancing with an animal that can just gut and kill you if it wants…and yet you hand over your heart. You dance with that Bear. And ultimately the Bear is vulnerable, too…because you have a rifle. You could each kill the other. The trust comes from not doing so. The trust comes from placing that tender beautiful heart in the other’s gentle keeping."
Vulnerability is such a scary, beautiful thing. To trust and step out of one’s comfort zone and do something you wouldn’t otherwise do. To let your guard down and let someone into your sacred world. It’s terrifying but absolutely worth it.
I’ve been reading Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown, which offers new ways of looking at belonging and community. In the book, Brené brings up this powerful acronym for B-R-A-V-I-N-G, the seven elements of Trust.
Boundaries: You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s
okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no.
Reliability: You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware of
your competencies and limitations so you don’t over promise and are able to deliver on
commitments and balance competing priorities.
Accountability: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.
Vault: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I
need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any
information about other people that should be confidential.
Integrity: You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over
what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than
simply professing them.
Non-judgment: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We
can talk about how we feel without judgment.
Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the
intentions, words, and actions of others
These are really hard to follow when it comes to self-trust, as I’ve experienced. But the hope is to learn one day at a time, and get better at trusting myself and others in the process. I hope this understanding of BRAVING and trust helps, somehow.
Poetry Corner
I’ve been reading some heartbreakingly gorgeous poems these days:
One More Love Poem by Dunya Mikhail
If I had one more day
I would write a love poem
composed of one word
repeated like binary code.
I’ll multiply it by the number
of days that passed
without saying it to you
and I’ll add the days
when I said it with no words
because I want to say it
more. And like a bee
gathering pollen, I’ll collect
everything ever said
in one word like a square root
multiplied by the power of ten.
I’ll count even that day
when my anger at you
or for you turned me into
a stone, and also the days
when I was away
sending my songs like
postcards to the lonely,
feeling you in every touch
of love I gave to the world.
I’ll count all my days,
even the nine months of days
before I was born, to say
this exponential, growing “I love you.”Stay by Kim Addonizio
So your device has a low battery & seems to drain faster each day.
Maybe you should double your medication.
You might feel queasy, but also as if the spatula flattening you to the fry pan
has lifted a little.
So your breath comes out scorched, so what.
Inside, trust me on this,
there’s a ribbon of beach by a lake,
in the sand, fragments of a fossilized creature resembling a tulip.
Back in the Paleozoic, online wasn’t invented yet
so everyone had to wander alone & miserable through the volcanic wastes
or just glue themselves to a rock hoping someone would pass by.
Now you can sob to an image of your friend a continent away
& be consoled.
Please wait for the transmissions, however faint.
Listen: when a stranger steps into the elevator with a bouquet of white
roses not meant for you,
they’re meant for you.Open Ghazal by Len Anderson
Kiss the hand and cheek, kiss the lips that open.
Kiss the eyes and tears, kiss the wounds that open.
The nuclei of our atoms are so small, we are mostly nothing.
Whoever did this made our stone walls out of windows always open.
In a thicket: A bag too dark to see, too big to lift, too familiar to walk away from.
God grant me strength to drag it into the open.
6:10, stuck on the freeway again.
Love is singing with window and throat wide open.
My friend refused to greet the stranger in black,
was brought to the surgeon, who cut his heart open.
Go ahead, I dare you, take another breath. Each one is full
of what 14 billion years ago blew this world open.
We safecracker poets sand fingertips, pass long nights on our knees.
All to feel those clicks that mean the door will spring open.
Len says, I love the night sky, but I adore the Milky Way:
It is the edge of Her robe. See how gently it opens.Newtonian Nocturne by Danusha Laméris
I am sitting next to him in the front seat of his pickup
looking at the stars and trying to remember the laws of motion:
how a body in motion will remain in motion. And a body at rest
will remain at rest, until, or unless….And whenever one body
exerts a force onto a second body, etc., etc. and so on. I can smell
the frayed remainder of his cologne, feel the warmth of his knee
not quite touching mine. Moonlight lays itself along the field
and something stirs in the shadows. I can’t help wondering
how one body might act upon another—though I have a feeling
we’ll both keep minding the empty space between his right thigh,
my left, our bare arms, the heavy air that separates our lips.
I wish I could turn on the radio and listen to some crooner croon
about what we won’t say. But there’s only the drone of cars
passing on the main road and crickets singing in the dark grass.
He rolls down the windows and we breathe in the cool night air,
looking up at our galaxy of milk, that wash of luminaries
spilled across the sky, which, however bright they seem,
are moving—even now—farther and farther away.Do You Love Me by Rumi
Do You Love Me?A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more
than you love me?
The beloved replied,
I have died to myself
and I live for you.
I’ve disappeared from myself
and my attributes.
I am present only for you.
I have forgotten all my learning,
but from knowing you
I have become a scholar.
I have lost all my strength,
but from your power
I am able.
If I love myself
I love you.
If I love you
I love myself.
Recommended Listening:
Visangati - Utsav Lal (Indian classical music on piano)
Links of the Week:
I like Lauren Maxwell's take on friendship:
"I want to share your holy moments. I want to feast on life—yours, then mine—I want to eat everyday meals together, concocted in minutes with odds and ends from my fridge. I want fancy meals too, prepared by stirring a pot for hours on end with great care. I want to spin webs of joy that glisten like an open door.I want to love you more than the world thinks I should. I want to know how it’s going with your newborn—how you’re really feeling on no sleep. I can hold the baby while you shower; he seems fragile so I’m careful. Honestly I am fragile, too."
32 things I've learned in 32 years (Madeleine Dore has my heart)
I'm loving everything by The Strange Co., a ceramic studio run by Satabdi Jena and Snehannita Dewanji from Delhi that brings emotions to everyday objects!
For a Queer Indian Woman, I Dream About My Wedding Way Too Much
The pleasure of leisure: an essay
I’m excited to share an essay on the Pleasure of Leisure for FirstPost’s new series Leisure & Loiter, curated by Neerja Deodhar, which explores the value of rest, love, pleasure, hobbies, travel, day-dreaming, food, conversation in our everyday existence.
An excerpt
Far too many writers, artists, and poets have vouched for the fact that creativity manifests when you become the vessel, the channel for ideas to pour out of you. But in a digital age when we’re always hyper-connected and over-inundated with content, it takes freeing up of the headspace for the “big magic”, as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it, to appear.
“The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn't take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for an instant. Respond to what has caught your attention. Look into it a bit. Is there something there for you?” asks Gilbert.
In a generation of over-thinkers, wouldn’t it be nice to be a non-thinker, to get some much-needed R&R for the mind? Intentionally doing nothing opens up the doors to possibilities, making way for a richer inner life and dormant ideas to find their way to the surface.
Read the full essay here.
Be brave and vulnerable!
Love,
Rohini
Thank you for this!